


Death looks like you

by aimeeandjaguar, strangely_appealing



Category: Grand Hotel (1932), Greta Garbo - Fandom, joan crawford - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Kinda dark idk, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27184900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimeeandjaguar/pseuds/aimeeandjaguar, https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangely_appealing/pseuds/strangely_appealing
Summary: “I want to be alone”, – she always says and never sends you away. Everything about Grusinskaya makes so little sense that at some point you’d stopped trying to understand. She is all angles and ‘let’s not make it personal’, when you call her by first name, but then would telephone you at two in the morning with ‘want some whiskey?’
Relationships: Grusinskaya/Flaemmchen
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	Death looks like you

**Author's Note:**

> It's five in the morning and I've been writing it al night so idk stan Garbo and Crawford ig  
> PS english is not my native language so be gentle  
> PSS с любовью для Анечки

Paris, 1934.  
You thought she looked like death had been after her for years (or rather she was after death), like she was slowly and painfully dying every day. Instead you said: – You look beautiful, – and she answered absolutely nothing in return. One might think she had some sort of word limit, something like ‘50 words per day’.  
“I want to be alone”, – she always says and never sends you away. Everything about Grusinskaya makes so little sense that at some point you’d stopped trying to understand. She is all angles and ‘let’s not make it personal’, when you call her by the first name, but then she would telephone you at two in the morning with ‘want some whiskey?’  
Sometimes you wonder if she drinks something besides alcohol or eats anything at all, because she was so painfully skinny you couldn’t tell. You have never seen her doing anything human, anything that would indicate she was made of flesh and blood. And other times you wondered if she was just a figment of your imagination. Maybe she was just as dead as everyone else you had ever cared about. Then she would shot you a questioning look, and it would calm you down, because you couldn’t possibly imagine someone as incomprehensible as she is.  
You watch her dancing every night. On stage she is nothing like herself or – rather – she is everything she isn’t. She is every emotion, every movement, every color, and every time of the year. She is the world in this moment (too short for your taste), and when it is over she is full of death again.  
\- It’s so painful to watch you transform from everything to nothing every night.  
\- Too painful?  
\- No.  
\- Good. I don’t want you to go.  
\- You know I won’t.  
\- But you think I will.  
\- Sometimes when I walk in, and there are roses all over your bed, and just for this one moment I think that it’s…  
-Blood?  
\- Yes...  
\- You never should’ve seen those scars.  
\- I would sooner or later.  
\- I guess we made it personal after all.  
\- I guess we did.  
She smokes cigarette after cigarette as hungrily and painfully as if her life depended on it. But then – maybe it did. You smoked with her, the weight of this confession settling in. Hardly a declaration of love, but it was the first time she actually acknowledged your presence and even more - she almost asked you to stay. And now she was everything again. You kissed her, carelessly throwing cigarette in a direction of ashtray, hoping it won’t start a fire, then, for the first time, you did something against the rules.  
Never kiss her first. Never call her by the first name. Never stay after. Never talk about him.  
She brakes her own rules whenever she feels like it, so why couldn’t you? Because you are too afraid of losing her, of walking into emptiness of the big hotel room, of being greeted with “I’m sorry but miss Grusinskaya left this morning”. But just for that night you could not afford to be afraid. Even for a little while.  
She lets you kiss her and you are feeling so much that it might as well be too much. Maybe it was too painful.  
She was everywhere and, finally, death was far away, and you could feel she was alive. You heard her heart beating and blood pulsating in her veins. And that was why you could never leave, because not knowing it would be too much. Everything else was as bearable as life could get.  
You had sex. Everything before that night you could safely call fucking. Now you two made it personal. You had been waiting for “Stop treating me like I’m made out of glass”, but she never said it. That night you called her Elizabeth for the first time. You couldn't tell if it tasted sweet or bitter. She stared at you, questioning look on her face. It was phenomenal how she could communicate without saying a word. You couldn’t, so you had to break the silence.  
\- Can I stay?  
\- I told you already that I didn’t want you to go.  
\- But you never said you wanted me to stay.  
\- You can’t read between the lines, can you?  
\- One never knows anything with you.  
\- And with others?  
\- You know there aren’t any others.  
\- Do I?  
\- Do you sleep with anyone else?  
\- Why would I drag another person into this mess?  
\- I guess, not to make it personal.  
\- I thought we already established that it is now.  
\- When Baron was talking about you I imagined you to be so lively.  
\- His death killed all my liveliness.  
You could feel her tense at the mention of him. But you were so tired of his ghost flying around the room, watching and judging you.  
-It is paradoxical how I wanted to distance myself from death and then I surrounded myself with you.  
\- Do I look like death?  
\- Death looks like you.  
\- How sweet and flattering your compliments are.  
If you didn’t know better you would think that she actually smiled.  
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, smoking and shaking off ashes on the most expensive carpet you’d ever seen.  
\- I think I might be in love with you, - you blurted out into the darkness of the room.  
\- Would you stop? – She sounded like this was the most obvious and stupid thing to say. Maybe it was.  
-What? Loving you? – You felt like a child these moments, but she was driving you mad with all the unsaid.  
\- Thinking. It’s no good.  
You rested your head on her shoulder. Finally, all the thinking had stopped. Maybe the world did too.


End file.
